Of Love, Guilds, and Memories

When I was poking around over on Warcraft Realms (Found Here) I was suddenly caught in a wave of memories.

Mostly good and few meh I thought I would share a story of the best guild I have ever experienced.

So lets travel back to those heady days of 2006.  
* The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
* The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany declare that negotiations with  Iran over its nuclear program have reached a dead end and recommend that Iran be referred to the United Nations Security Council.
* Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City.
* Western Union discontinues use of its telegram service.
* Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.
* The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.
* English-language Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station.
* And I am a Tauren Hunter on the realm of Thorium Brotherhood.

Not quite as important as the rest but significant to me.

WoW's constants Life, death, and bags

Characters live, they die, and you pay a lot for them to have bags to hold stuff.  The basic law of Warcraft or is it?  I think there is a solution for leveling toons as well as boosters to 90.

On the auction house they certainly are.  Netherweave bags are the easiest to farm and make and give you a 16 slot size.  They bind on equip so people price the other 16 slot bags you can trade even higher.

Roll Call

A friend of mine was surprised at the number of characters I had as paladins so I thought for my amusement I would list them off (Just the over 80s) in no particular order.

Hunters;

Replacements for CC abilities on Pets in WoD

In WoD they are disarming CC and hunters get hit hard.  So putting on my thinking hat here are some ideas to replace abilities with.  Go let Blizzard know what you think of these ideas at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12413831293#1

Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze - replace with stone form from the dwarves.

Bat: Sonic Blast - Sonic Finder works as Faerie Fire vs stealth. Perhaps a + stealth detection on the pet?

Bird of Prey: Snatch - Grab: seize the target and do damage. While holding on unattackable.

Crab: Pin - Nerf Bat! No? Well how about Tough Shell (+armor/health) that stacks with last stand.

Hearthstoned

Warcraft has had a neat looking mount datamined for a while.  Speculation ran rampant on what it was for until recently.

Hearthstone Patch Notes 1.0.0.4944:
The Hearthsteed mount reward has been added and can now be obtained for your World of Warcraft account! Win 3 games in Play or Arena mode to acquire one of your own!
 (See the video here )

Thats it, just win 3 games?  That doesn't sound hard but it can be when you don't know what your doing.  With a bit of luck my deck design can give you a shortcut into getting the mount while not getting into Hearthstone.  Not that I think you shouldn't, cause the game is a neat one, but sometimes you just want the mount.

Warcraft Legendary Cloak Chain 0

So I finally completed the quest chain.  forced PvP.  Horrid grinding.  Just...ugh.

But it had its good points too.

So with MoP drawing to a close I'll be going back over my notes and write my own commentary on it.  Some of the writing was good, some of it was terrible.  The worst of course being anything having to do with Jaina.

......So I will be trying to be reasonable...

Of Justice and Purchases

I was listening to the Darkmoon Herald podcast (found here) and one of its fabulous hosts Kevin pointed out something Id known but never really thought about - Blizzard's current distribution model actually does punish people who want the physical copy.

At first my reaction was the typical nod and sigh in unhappiness because it sucks.  But the more I thought about it the more I became convinced this had to be resolved.  I really loved getting the ease of the digital download last time around with Mists of Pandaria but I'm starting to get into more of the artbooks and I would love to own a music CD for the game.  I haven't ever gotten a real collectors and with this kind of discouragement I know I wont ever pick one up.

So lets lay out exactly what the problem is.

Wisdom and Guilds

I came across a quote recently that really struck home when I think of Guilds in Warcraft.

"Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company." - George Washington 1st President of the USofA

Does this still apply in Warcraft? Guilds used to mean something very special.  When I see some guilds on my old servers I still have positive feelings from things that happened back when it mattered in BC.  Including when they policed their members and refused to let them be bastards to the rest of the realm.

Celestial Tournament - The Kids

You have to have teams that do not use the same pets as used to defeat the other Master Trainers in the tournament because of their stupid cheating no healing rule.

Zao, Calfling of Niuzao

I start with Zao because he is the touchiest of the bunch for me.  his AI has been tossing me curveballs but so far my strategy has held up.

1) Pandaren Water Spirit (Pandaren Water Spirit Daily pet battle)
B) Whirlpool C) Geyser
2) Something with howl. Example - Alpine Foxling Kit
B) Howl
3) Dragon with Tail Sweep Example - Dark Whelpling

Start off with Geyser and then Whirlpool, swap to the Howl Pet and Howl.  Swap to the Tail Sweep pet and sweep twice.  Victory!

Celestial Tournament pt 1 - Kiryn, Mari, Blingatron 4000

Shademaster Kiryn (Timeless Isle)

1) Fledgling Nether Ray (Caught in netherstorm)
B) Tail Sweep C) Shadowshock
2) Fel Flame (Captured Shadowmoon Valley)
A) Flame Breath B) Immolate C) Conflagurate
C) Darkmoon Zepplin
A) Missile C) Decoy

As a flyer the Ray is strong against his attacks so its simple - just Shadowshock till Nairn dies.
Tailsweep Stormoen and that will ikely be the end fo the Ray.

Bring in the Fel Flame.  With Stormoen's lightning storm up his Dot will cripple the mechanical.  Immolate, Conflagurate, Flame Breath, and its all over.

Thats likely the end of the Fel Flame too.  On to the Zepplin!

You wil lbe forced to eat the incoming damage for two rounds, its worth being patient and waiting.  Trigger Decoy before he can hit you with Prowl.  Missile away till you win.

Pet Battlin pt 1 - Vanilla and WotLK Grandmasters

Its no secret that my enthusiasm for Warcraft has had a few issues lately.  from CSRs who are keyboard snapping frustrating to being Forced into PvP fo rmy Legendary its just...meh.

The Pet battles have been the same sort of awful with them relying on cheating to make it harder.  Making it punishing not difficult.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs i think because of the raiders they pushed into it.

Anyway I thought I would lay out my teams and might help others to fight.  If I skip an ability for a per its because I think its a useless slot.

Pet Battle teams is such an amazing mod

My Visit to Hearthstone

Thanks to a friend I was able to get a Beta account and try out Hearthstone.  Its interesting but has some very deep flaws.

The gameplay is good, the animations over the top but not too terribly slow.  I will probably end up playing it off and on.  That said lets pick some nits.

RP: A Letter to the Tears of Draenor

A bit of backstory.  Some RP happened with some of the guild Nightwill is in wanting to RP breaking away from the Horde to ally with the trolls.  While I was not able to get really involved with the RP Night did write a letter spelling out her feelings at the time.  here it is;

Friends and those once friends,

These will be some of the hardest words I have ever written.

Thoughts on WoW Cognitive Fatigue

I dont know the game but Cyn picked a lovely picture.

Cynwise wrote a really excellent article about Cognitive Fatigue (here).  I just had to add my own thoughts.

I've been studying game design for a while now as a passionate hobbyist.  UI design and execution is one of the things that has majorly changed since MUDs begain them.

Everquest gave us our first graphical interface for an MMO and Warcraft took much of its inspiration from that source.

Women in WoW - is there a right way to do it?

Navimie over at the Daily Frostwolf wrote on this topic (if you haven't read it check the post out here) and its a really good article.

But I had some disagreements of my own I wanted to comment about.  Usually I would leave a comment on the blog but these aren't really clear cut.  Not just objections but objections*.  So like Genie I need to ramble a bit and get it clarified so here we go..

Aladdin: You're gonna grant me any 3 wishes I want, right? 
Genie: [imitating William F. Buckley] Uh, ah, almost. There are a few, uh, provisos. Ah, a couple of quid pro quo.

Gamon, Orgrimmar, thoughts

While I was working on my iron pet character I wandered by Gamon and was surprised to see him not busy killing players but occupied with the current storyline.

A brief bit of history.  Gamon was an NPC in a rogue quest chain that because of mechanics needed to be neutral.  Also it was interesting to see how many times the level 8 rogue would kill him before realizing they needed to pick his pockets (3 for me :)

Because of this people killed him over and over until he suddenly leveled up and became elite leading to this.

Iron Pet Challenge

or:  Your doing what???

I've been working on the amount of exp you can get from pet battles and it inspired me to try an experiment.

Here are the rules.

1) I get exp from pet battles.

2) No quest exp.  i might need to bend this if I find one I HAVE to do but I don't think any zone is locked by a quest any more.

Though it will make getting around Cata zones..interesting.

3) No Kill/Grind XP.

4) Exploration exp is OK because I cant stop it.  More on this later.

5) No equipment upgrades beyond my starting equipment and Safari Hat WoW insists every character of mine might need.

6) Eventually I will be joining a guild, I dunno if they have the exp bonus or not.  Just mainly for guild invite blocking.

Some oddities.

I created my character and opened my statistics to take screen shots and found by logging in I completed 45 quests.  No really.

My assumption is those are the pet battle account wide quests.  So our zero point will be 45 I guess.

I've Acquired 4c form selling my staff.  So I wont kill something if I accidentally click on it.

I'm selling a few pets to get some capital for flight paths and flight training I don't know if that will alter the number.

I found exp went wonky at low levels.  I was getting 9-10 a kill and my pets ah somewhat more.  Mulling this over I decided exploration would be a part of my low level exp since at 10 exp a kill levels would be brutally slow to come.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel...after a fashion.
\
So how well did I do after the first evenign /played?  here you go..

Level 4!

Not too awful but it isn't rocket speed.

I'm to the point I am earning FAR more exp from fights.  though I'm also running through level 1 pets like water. So far Ive been able to stick to my stable but soon ill end up leveling wild ones just to get the exp.

Its a fun little challenge to work on.  If you want to give it a try let me know and Ill post your results here.

Special thanks to Redcow from red cow rise for giving me a bit of help in coin while I was waiting for pet sales.  She is amazing.

XP, Pet Battles, and You

I've been doing some exploration into the experience given by pet battles after a rather startling experience I had on one of my new hunters - leveling through Cataclysm in 2 days.  Mostly because of Pet Battles.

I didnt have heirlooms or any bonuses besides the basic guild + exp and a couple of days of rested exp.   Now I did do some quests, 41 of them, and all the dungeon quests.  Well Except Grim Batol.  Who can get those quests done in a hurry though?

The more I looked into it  the deeper the rabbit hole went.  In part I think because the code is years old and patched and repatched until its very..interesting.  But here are a few things I found out.

5.2 Hunter Gear (non raid)

I put together a list of gear for a friend of mine.  She avoids raids for the most part but we plan to do just enough to get a bit of rep for the assault in time.  I thought it might be useful for others so here is a lose guide for gearing up in 5.2.  Of course this also works for Shamans if your one of the sexy enhancement types.

Trinkets
Relic of Xuen 476 Darkmoon Fair Deck Crafted/Quest Trinket 1
Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault 463 Rep: Shadow Pan Assault - Friendly 1750 VP Trinket 2
Malevolent Gladiator's Insignia of Conquest 476 PvP Vendor 1750 HP Trinket -

Wandering Thoughts: Steven Colbert and Poetry!

I've been out of the game for too long to have too much to say.  I've been following the recent changes as best I can but without actually doing something in game I don't feel like I should be babbling on about it.

So something I have been doing is watching Steven Colbert.  Even after his mistake of singing the Christmas Date Rape song I'm willing to watch and Chris Kluwe was on.  WoW was mentioned so that was my thin way of linking ti to Warcraft, the interview is great, check it out here.

Some of my hard drive was able to be recovered and with it my past writing.  so a small poem I wrote for a Vampire (V:TM) character to his mortal love.

Ill be there when your heart starts racing, 

Ill be the one to make your thunder roll.

Ill be there when you learn you can fly, 

Ill cheer when you make dragons fall 

Ill be there as the long summer fades, 

Ill adore you when your hair turns gray. 

Ill be there to remind you to still sing, 

Ill be the one to make you laugh again. 

Ill be there to hold you with love's touch,

Ill sing the last note of your song. 

Ill be there to kiss away your last breath, 

Ill cry as you fade into the night, 

And then...I will be gone.